writes:
I've been thinking about the possibilities offered by plastic critters.
I did some online shopping, and found this bag of 'educational' plastic flies.
As flies go, these are big flies.
Compared with this 28mm post-Apocalypse survivor, these flies are a significant hazard. However, I'm thinking to prepare some flies as 15mm fantasy mass-combat monsters.
I've tipped this fly over so that you can see that it's hollow on the bottom. It is cast in black plastic, and depending on the thickness, the color is darker or translucent.
So let's get some flies on my workbench and start painting!
To my delight, the plastic takes paint without needing to be primed. My first step is to flip the flies over, and paint the insides black to make the bodies a solid color rather than translucent.
Using a sharp hobby knife, I trimmed off any extraneous bits of plastic from the legs and mandibles.
I then used a black permanent marker to color in the legs and mandibles. The last step was to paint the eyes – which took several coats to look right – and mount the flies on 2" by 2" fantasy monster bases.
Superglue holds the flies in place.
I edged the bases in white for no particular reason, except that I hadn't used white for any other faction.
I wasn't intending these for skirmish gaming, but I suppose they would work.
And remember… flies can fly!
I only needed a few for my fantasy army, so I have the rest of the bag to use for other purposes.
The wings were left unpainted and translucent. Maybe I should have drybrushed some grey on the body and legs to bring out the details.
A quick-and-easy project for your fantasy or sci-fi gaming.